


Five Times Tony Stark was Master of the Universe

by Prosodi



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Death, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-31
Updated: 2012-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-30 10:00:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prosodi/pseuds/Prosodi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In big ways and small ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Tony Stark was Master of the Universe

**One**  
Sometimes it takes him a few seconds to sway out of the rhythmic line of code and machinery, to tear himself out of the math. Sometimes when he closes his eyes at night, Tony sees nothing but numbers and schematics and when he wakes up it's with espresso in one hand and a pen in the other and numbers scrawled up in inside of his forearm: a souvenir to remind him where he's been.

Once at a conference in Pittsburgh he took a pretty brunette physicist up to room and somewhere between getting her out of her blouse and him out of his slacks, talking shop while he unhooked her bra, she mentioned something about polytropes and the gravity of stars and Tony had to kiss her to keep himself from writing it all down.

Later: She steps back into her underwear and asks "Do you want me to write it down for you?"

 

 **Two**  
Alright, so. He tries to explain this and it doesn't really fly but the main points are basically this: Giant lizard in space talked down through a Russian satellite. It's pretty much the coolest thing he's ever done (literally - he will never stop telling this story), but try telling that to Russians.

 

 **Three**  
It all surges once before going out completely, driving through his chest and making his heart stutter. Then the suit falls out of the sky like a stone. With the HUD down, he can't even watch the ground as it rises to meet him, can't brace for impact.

When it hits, the suit blows a crater ten feet wide in some lonely Midwest cornfield.

When Tony comes to he can't see and for a second there's a tightness in his chest that feels either like panic or a heart attack before he realizes that it's just the suit still being screwy. It takes everything he has to get the helmet off. His eye swims around the stalks of corn, disoriented, until finally he catches the patch of sky above him.

It was late afternoon when he fell. Now the north star is directly overhead. It takes a few seconds before Tony begins to laugh.

 

 **Four**  
When Tony dies, it creates a black hole. Gravity pulls everything in. There is no light, there is no sound. There is just the feeling of being chewed up and catapulted through time and space until eventually Pepper wakes up to find herself sitting on the patio with a cup of coffee in one hand and the employment ads from the newspaper in the other (which she will later realize is ridiculous - who uses the paper anymore?).

It takes her a few seconds to realize what she's doing, a bit longer that she's in the bathrobe her mother gave her three Christmases ago and that she's never worn until now. Her hair isn't brushed. Still, she finishes her coffee while leaning over the ledge: she can see the freeway from here, catch the faint buzz of traffic. She doesn't go inside to shower until she's drained the cup down to its black bottom, wondering how the rest of the world survived it.

 

 **Five**  
He went sailing only once in his life. It was a friend's boat - more specifically, belonged to someone he was supposed to be friends with and instead just sort of happened to know for the first two years of college; the kid his mother wanted him to be with because it was supposed to be good for him to spend time with someone his own age. Because it reminded Tony how much smarter he was - and that was important.

It was supposed to be a day trip, but in the morning when Tony came down he found the car gone. The housekeeper who had made him breakfast: "Your poppa said there was an emergency and he will be back late."

Tony goes anyway, gets the kid and his Dad to pick him up. He doesn't know anything about sailing, but by the time they've made their way out into the bay he thinks he gets it; it's all math. Anyway, none of it really matters. They miss the tide by an hour and have to use the gas motor to tack back toward home in the falling darkness. The kid is obnoxious, but what eats at Tony the most is the way father and son name the constellations as they appear in the sky.

On the dock, the kid asks Tony what was so important that his dad didn't come. "There was an emergency."

"Sounds fishy."

Tony looks at him and for a second he wants to punch the kid. Instead: "You suck at shortening sail by the way."

He never goes out on their boat again, but for his birthday Tony asks for a telescope and because it is easy his parents give it to him.


End file.
